Laundry Room Woes

One of my least favorite things about my home , OK I have a few but really it is the laundry room that is the bane of my existence in this house.... The architect who designed this floor plan should be sent back to school. There is no way I can call a 4.5 foot wide corridor between the garage door and the hallway to the master and kitchen a laundry room! No, this was a mudroom that got stuck doing double duty as the laundry room because the builder forgot to make a dedicated area for a washer and dryer.

Poor Laundry corridor/hall/mudroom thing

Anyway, since I moved in this poor room has had the displeasure of being the dumping grounds. Those shelves are clean now, but just before that picture the room should have had a hazard sign warning of impending avalanche. It is amazing to try to walk through with groceries. Imagine trying holding a carton of eggs while carrying 6-8 bags of refrigerated goods only to realize you have forgotten that you have been drying clothes and have had to pull the dryer AWAY from the wall. Now you have to unload on top of the washer shove yourself between the dryer and the opposite wall and heave it back to the wall it belongs on. Why does this have to be done? Oh yeah because  Fox & Jacobs / Centex only made the room 4.5 ft wide. If you don't have the dryer pulled from the wall, it will overheat and the dry will turn the heat off to protect itself from overheating, however it will not prevent the lent from catching fire like it did once in the past.

The next issue with this room is the placement of the doors. Yes there is one at each end of the room. they both swing INTO the laundry room and lay flat against the wall opposite of the Washer and Dryer wall. However if the washer and dryer are not exactly together in the middle of the room the doors hit the washer or dryer. oh fun. 

Today's mission is to make this place a little more functional without removing load bearing walls, preferably no walls, but I will agree to no load bearing ones currently.

First I completely emptied the entire room and then decided to go to Lowe's and bought a dryer wall inset box. After reading the instructions and realizing there would be electrical lines in the wall near the area I would be cutting into, I politely informed Noble on what he would be doing for me. He cut a small hole in the wall to see where the wires, pipes and lines were and after a few minutes of banging and hacking away I had a pretty little inset in the wall that now allows the dryer to stay against the wall and keeps the dryer vent hose from getting smooshed in the process.

The new vent insert

The Small hole

Now, it is time for some laundry room organization. I'm thinking IKEA?